neuracnu

In a vote that Councilmember Tammy Morales called a “foregone conclusion,” the city council appointed Tanya Woo to fill the vacant Position 8 council seat on Tuesday. Woo—a Chinatown-International District activist who recently led a successful campaign to stop the expansion of a Salvation Army shelter in SoDo—lost to District 2 (Southeast Seattle) incumbent Tammy Morales in November; now, she’ll represent the entire city.

Washington bill HB 2103 and SB5955 call for Port of Seattle to dedicate portions of new tax revenue to mitigate noise and air pollution for those who live under the most common flight paths, within 10 miles of SeaTac, as well as fix failed noise mitigation packages (see WA HB 1847 from 2019-20).

More flights means more business and more money for the port, but more noise and air pollution in your ears and lungs. Let's make the fuckers pay for it.

These are the bills, and they need your support:

HB 2103 (for the 2023-2024 session) https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=2103&Chamber=House&Year=2023

SB 5955 (for the 2023-2024 session) https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5955&Year=2023&Initiative=false

If you feel like helping, do the following BEFORE MONDAY EVENING, JANUARY 22nd:

• click each of the links above
• on each page, find the green button that says "Send a comment on this bill to your legislators" and click it
• fill out the comment page with your address and info (making sure to click the "Verify Your District" button to ensure the right people get the note).
• You can use this boilerplate text:

My name is XXXXXX and I live at XXXXXX. I and my family experience air and noise pollution from airplanes coming from SeaTac Airport. [ Explain how you are impacted with examples like "I/my XX ​have/has asthma, I get stressed, I can't sleep." ] This bill will help the Port keep its environmental and community-related values. I strongly support HB2103 and SB 5955. Please DO PASS to the sake of our health and lives.

Respectfully, [Your name, and if you want family or household names with their permission.]

That's enough political engagement for one day.

kthxbye

Hyper-Reality presents a provocative and kaleidoscopic new vision of the future, where physical and virtual realities have merged, and the city is saturated in media.

Cold open to the final season of Letterkenny.

By KIRO 7 News Staff and Jake Chapman, KIRO 7 News November 14, 2023 at 11:08 pm PST

SEATTLE — Eighty-five ballots from the mailbox on East John Court and 15th Avenue East in Seattle just reached the King County Elections Office on Tuesday after concerns were raised about that mailbox never being emptied.

A spokesperson with the King County Elections Office sent us this statement about the ordeal and what the next steps are in the counting process.

“King County Elections was alerted on Monday that there were concerns that a USPS mailbox on 15th & John was not being emptied during the voting period and that there were concerned voters who had dropped their ballots there. After learning of this, we immediately reached to USPS to look into what happened.

In their investigation, USPS reported back to us that the box had not been opened since mid-October. They retrieved the 85 ballots that were in the box and delivered them to our office on Tuesday, November 14.” – Halei Watkins, Communications Manager

Watkins told us that those ballots will be able to be counted despite the issue with the mailbox.

However, if a ballot doesn’t feature a postmark, they’ll look to other identifying barcodes from USPS. And if they don’t have that barcode, they can accept the date provided on the signature line.

“I think that the inefficiency of things can also make it hard for people to be able to get out and vote,” said Alejandro who lives in Capitol Hill.

As to how this all happened, a spokesperson with the United States Postal Services said they scheduled to remove and repair the mailbox due to a lock issue.

In a statement, they told us employees placed out-of-service signs on the mailbox multiple times, but the signage was removed, and unwitting customers continued to use the box.

“The U.S. Postal Service is committed to the timely and secure delivery of Election Mail.

We are aware of a collection box in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, scheduled for removal due to a lock issue. Our employees placed “out of service” signs on the box multiple times, but the signage was removed, and unwitting customers continued to use the box. We have now removed the collection box and its contents, including some Election Mail and ballots, and are delivering the mail. We are repairing the collection box and intend to reinstall it when repairs are complete. We regret any inconvenience to customers.” – Kim Frum, Strategic Communications Specialist

But some in Capitol Hill wonder if what the postal service said is true.

“At the very least, they could’ve directed people to one that is close by, or set up another temporary one, or there is a lot of options that you could do and not just say this is broken, sorry,” said Kenny who lives in Capitol Hill.

“It must’ve been out of service then or they knew it was out of service and they are now just trying to save face, maybe,” said Alejandro.

Whether this snag has impacted any tight races that are going on in King County is still a mystery. Stay with KIRO 7 for the latest election results.

Nov 3 2023 marks the furthest Halley's comet will be from Earth before making the turn-around trip back.

As the Workers Behind the KCRHA’s Abandoned Partnership for Zero Program, We Were Betrayed. And So Were You.

Editor’s Note:

As part of its privately funded Partnership for Zero effort to end visible homelessness in downtown Seattle, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority hired several dozen “systems advocates” with personal experience of homelessness to help to hundreds of people living unsheltered downtown navigate the byzantine homelessness system and access resources and housing. The initial idea was simple: The systems advocates would get to know people living downtown and work to overcome their barriers to housing, rapidly connecting them to either permanent supportive housing or subsidized, private-market apartments and helping them sustain that housing.

The homelessness authority revamped the program several times over its first year, changing the systems’ advocates roles and creating geographic “zones” within downtown in an attempt to address smaller, more manageable areas one at a time. But the authority never came up with a sustainable long-term funding source for the program, assuming—despite warnings from existing service providers and outside experts—that it would be able to rely on a novel use of an existing Medicaid program to pay for ongoing operations.

Last month, the KCRHA shut down the program, laying off dozens of systems advocates, including many who were recently homeless. Some had moved to Seattle from other cities or given up their housing vouchers to take jobs at the agency, and are now facing the possibility of becoming homeless again. This piece is by a group of system advocates who reached out to PubliCola to tell their story.

As former Systems Advocates for the recently shuttered Partnership for Zero program, we have been deeply disappointed in and betrayed by the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, as have all of you.

While much has been made of us being hired because of our lived experience of homelessness, the majority of us also had years of direct homeless service and community-building experience and were considered some of the best in our field, which is why we were chosen for this team. We were tasked with building a trauma-informed, holistic approach to deal with one symptom of the systematic economic and social abandonment of Seattle’s poor and working class. All of us signed on to spend five years of our lives building this approach. We left stable jobs and some of us traveled across the country to participate.

From day one, however, our team was undermined by a constant barrage of consultants and bureaucrats, most of whom had spent years failing up the ladder within the Homeless Industrial Complex. Our program was stalled for months at a time by indecisive management more concerned with pleasing politicians than fulfilling our mission.

We were also forced to waste three weeks trying to resolve an “encampment” at Occidental Park, where no people actually camped, because the mayor wanted to put in an ice skating rink; another four months navigating clients who mostly came from outside downtown Seattle from hotels into housing; and the last two months resolving another non-encampment at a dog park in Belltown so the hip restaurants across the street could sell overpriced biscuits and $8 tacos without having to gaze upon the results of decades of bad public policy. These were our assignments, instead of working in the four actual encampments we had repeatedly identified as good candidates for a housing-first approach.

In addition, it is shameful that the equitable wages that we received for our skilled and challenging work have been cited as part of the reason for the closure of this program. Our original mandate was to do housing navigation and stabilization, which is normally the work of two separate full-time positions; later, the KCRHA expanded our jobs to include outreach as well, even though the authority is already paying longstanding and skilled organizations to perform that work.

At the end of the day, King County and the city of Seattle got a steal, off our backs. We cannot expect to break the cycle of homelessness by supporting anything less than an equitable wage for the people who do this work. That brings us to KCRHA’s labor practices. We were hired as full-time, permanent employees. Our program was never described as a “pilot” in our hiring paperwork, job descriptions, or any of the founding documents. The first time we heard the word “pilot,” or any official word about the precariousness of Partnership for Zero funding, was when KCRHA management decided to discontinue our team.

Some of us would not have pursued this job, as this layoff has put several of us in a position to be homeless again ourselves. This action by management has resurfaced feelings of instability in our own lives, and most certainly in the lives of our clients. KCRHA has also stalled union negotiations for the entirety of our team’s existence and is now pleading poverty in a transparent attempt to avoid paying out our sick and vacation hours, while simultaneously hiring nearly a dozen new administrative and management staff in the last two months.

The first System Advocates were not hired until June 29, 2022, and the program was not at functional capacity until late October of last year. In the short time we were allowed to work toward our mission, we were able to permanently house hundreds of people. We count this as a great success. Compared to downtowns in other major cities, our work has been some of the best in the country. If even 40 percent of the people we were able to put in rapid rehousing are allowed to economically and socially stabilize, taxpayers will save more than the cost of the program in carceral and medical costs alone, as well as reaping the benefits of a healthier society.

We could’ve done much more if our program was given the chance. But the KCRHA is clearly not living by its founding ideas of creating a homeless response system that centers the needs and voices of the unhoused. Instead, the agency seems intent on becoming yet another bureaucratic barrier to getting people housed. We expected more, and the staff, our unhoused neighbors, and the people of King County deserve better.

Circus Maximus 75 minutes

A 2023 American musical anthology film co-written, executive produced, and directed by Travis Scott. The film is Scott's directorial debut, with segments directed by a murder's row of talent: Gaspar Noé (Irréversible, Enter the Void, Climax), Nicolas Winding Refn (Pusher, Bronson, Drive, The Neon Demon), Harmony Korine (Kids, Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy, Spring Breakers, The Beach Bum), Valdimar Jóhannsson (Lamb), Andrew Dosunmu (), CANADA, and Kahlil Joseph.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circus_Maximus_(film)

• Trailers for movies, television and games
• https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/c/trailers
• !trailers@lemmy.blahaj.zone

This is a community for sharing trailers and teasers for upcoming film, television and video game premieres.

The overall goal is for the posts to function as a feed of unique trailers, with only the occasional meta posts by mods. For those seeking more open-ended discussions around tv and movies (new and old), see this community: !moviesandtv@lemmy.film

Last week KING5 shared with you what fall fashions are totally out and not what to wear this season by being the first local news outlet to show you video of a young woman’s last moments of life before being smashed by a Seattle Police Department cruiser going three times the posted speed limit without a siren on. Hint: Black is out!

This week, we’re showing you what fall fashions are in if you want to stay both classy and not thrown 100 feet by a speeding cop SPD hired with a nice bonus just a year after his driving license was suspended in Arizona. And, hey, even if you do get struck and killed by one anyway, don’t you want to be proud of what everyone finds about your fashion sense when they inevitably ask, “But what was she wearing?” We thought so! Get these fall looks in your closet stat:

1. Last Year’s Carnival Costume from Your Trip to Rio

Why not samba your way to safety in some eye-catching, hi-viz colors? A cop couldn’t possibly run you over if you were dressed this fabulously. He’d immediately wonder if you’re his go-to on Aurora. It’s just a bonus that you’ll look like a freezing first-grade Thanksgiving turkey craft project come to life.

2. Novelty Foam Sheriff’s Hat

Woah there, cowboy. This 50-gallon hat is big enough to attract anyone’s attention, and the sheriff’s star lets SPD know you’re one of them.

3. Inflatable Hamster Ball

This not only keeps the rain off, but also gives you some cushion if you’re ever being punted down the street by a police cruiser. And, just so we’re clear: It’s the cruiser that causes the collision, definitely not the officer behind the wheel.

4. Phial of Galadrial with the Light of Earendil

You’ll need to make friends with some elves to get your hands on this hot accessory, but there’s nothing like the captured light of a star to make you visible to police officers who otherwise cannot be bothered to look for you.

5. Vibranium Black Panther Suit

If you’re dead-set on wearing black—or heaven forbid, being black—you should probably make sure you’re wearing high quality fabrics. That’s why we’re recommending all black attire should be made from Vibranium to protect you from unexpected impacts. Unfortunately, Vibranium is a bit expensive. So, this is really only an option for pedestrians SPD considers to be high value.

6. A Car

It’s made from several tons of steel, and newer models come with airbags that deploy on impact. As an added bonus, SPD considers you a real person if you’re inside of one.

Tom Cardy plays D&D. Of course he's a bard.

He's also in an actual D&D podcast called The Dragon Friends.

6-minute animated short film by directors Mélina IENCO, Lucie JURIC, Caroline LEIBEL, Faustine MERLE, Claire PELLET (students of Gobelins, a school of visual communication and arts in Paris). Enable closed-captions for English subtitles.

In a fantasy world, a griffin embraces his fate and goes on an epic journey to find a legendary creature: The Human.